jtudor2005 wrote:
> Robin, you're missing my point.
I am certainly not missing your point as I know a fair amount about psychoa=
cosutics and even know some people who have been working on improving the M=
P3 algorithm... which is ongoing work, by the way. I myself was testing the=
Fraunhofer IIS back when one had to individually license the products. And=
when the audio results were quite dismal!
> I'm saying that the conversion to MP3 leaves
> a lot of information out.
Well, that would be the whole point. MP3 is perceptually encoded to leave o=
ut what we cannot hear anyway, due to a variety of masking effects. If you =
cannot hear the difference, then there is no difference, despite what your =
bits and graphs show. The compromise is in how aggressively one applies the=
algorithms. Too aggressive and one saves more space, but artefacts appear.
In a good studio with proper isolation and excellent monitors, it is rather=
difficult to tell the best MP3 streams (which are all I use) from uncompre=
ssed PCM. On some sources, it's impossible. There are many studies.
But listening environments are far from ideal. Most listening devices too. =
(Or do you have a $40K DAC?) In the "real world", 320kbps is good enough fo=
r accurate playback except for those with some existential angst over digit=
al.
(Please note that I am not advocating perceptual encoding for anything exce=
pt final delivery format.)
> And I can't say I've ever heard an MP3 version
> that sounds as good as a Wav version
While I do not wish to challenge your subjectivity, I find this statement d=
ifficult to believe. A rip from a typical over-compressed rock record sound=
s bad no matter how it is packaged. There's almost no dynamics and relative=
ly little variety in tonal information. But you are saying it will sound wo=
rse with MP3?
-- Robin Parmar
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